Conversation 2

This past weekend, I had my second meeting with Brandon. We met in the library here at TCU on Friday afternoon. Spoiler alert: no cigarettes this time.

            At first I sat down next to him in the empty library because he said he had to finish up something for a class. On a Friday afternoon? I knew from last time Brandon was dedicated, but not this dedicated… I sat next to him for probably ten minutes kind of just letting my eyes wander around the library until he finished his work. During his assignment, I could tell how hard he was working though, he wasn’t relaxed in any sense of the word. It looked as if he was engaged in an intense video game, his hand clicking the mouse repeatedly, with his eyes bouncing around the screen, almost comical to watch.

            Finally, he abruptly stops. He finished his work all of a sudden and we got up and walked to the “café” section of the library and began actually talking about what has been happening the last week.

            We sat down and started talking about the past ten minutes and how intense he looked. He kind of laughed off what I said and pointed at the fact that, that was normal from where he was from. He highlighted the fact that everyone in his high school looked scary while doing his or her homework. We once again, like last conversation, talked about the education system and how much harder it was in China. He made it sounds so easy in comparison, like a walk in the park.

            Our education discussion was then taken off course as an image of the Ukraine flashed up on the televisions above the library snack bar. I brought it up, and wanted to know his thought surrounding it.

He was very knowledgeable of the situation in Ukraine as well as politics in general. He said dictatorships and uneasiness within society, among people and government officials, is common in other places of the World, “you Americans” aren’t accustomed to these violent uprisings, Brandon said.

In response, I asked him about what the relationship was like between the Chinese government and the civilian people. Right off the bat, he came out with saying that China was a communist state, which was already known by us both, but I didn’t realize the severity. One thing that surprised me the most was the hostile actions of the police and government when in towns and villages across China. Brandon believes China is striving to be the best, and to do that they must keep their people in order and well behaved.

I always hear the prisons in America are known to be like a “vacation” compared to the ones in neighboring countries and around the globe. But nothing sounds like what he described. It was a scary description and sounded like a place that actually was used as more of a scare tactic to deter wrong doings rather than the optimistic rehabilitation sentences we hand out to the criminals in the United States.

One thing that struck me was the fact that we continued to use the word freedom over and over again. With me not experiencing the social tendencies in China, Brandon was able to express just how free we are here as Americans and how we have the ability to do what we want and when we want to do it. This isn’t always the case, as Brandon expressed his feeling of true confinement while in China. He was just waiting to leave and experience what America and specifically TCU had to offer. All in all, the conversation was very interesting as well as eye opening. It showed me the unique comfort and confidence that we as Americans I have in our government that is not universal. It sheds light on our freedoms as citizens, the social success that we have made as a nation, and our optimistic future as the United States of America.